Quality Awards

Progress is what happens when you pioneer improvements in healthcare. Our quality improvements serve as the model for hospitals around the world: and they're happening here every day.

Receiving one of healthcare's highest honors would not be possible without our dedicated team and the commitment and support of our partners. Thank you for letting MHQA contribute to making our healthcare better for everyone.

The International Hospital Federation selected Memorial Health System as one of two Excellence Award winners in the category of Quality & Safety and Patient-Centered Care. Memorial’s entry, “Reaching New Frontiers of Quality and Safety Using an Innovative 30/30/30 Lean Six Sigma Approach,” was chosen as Honorable Mention from among 131 submissions from 90 healthcare organizations across 24 countries. It details how nearly 400 Lean Six Sigma improvement projects completed at Memorial over a six-year period yielded more than $300 million in savings while creating measurable increases in patient safety and quality of care.

2016 American Hospital Association - McKesson Quest for Quality Prize

In partnership with MHQA, Memorial Medical Center was the winner of the 2016 American Hospital Association-McKesson Quest for Quality Prize. The prize recognizes hospital-wide commitment to highly reliable, safe, patient-centered care of exceptional quality — and is given to only one hospital in the country.

It is a reward for successful efforts in developing and promoting a systems-based approach toward improvements in quality of care. Here are examples of how we lead the nation in quality healthcare.

We want our patients to move around the room freely while being treated at Memorial, but falls can cause further injuries and lead to longer hospital stays.

We analyzed every detail of our patient rooms and found ways to make moving around easier and safer for our patients from strategically placed handrails to gait belts and walker training. Now, patients enjoy more mobility with significantly less risk of falling.

Data from the first year of the program showed strong gains in overall health outcomes, as well as some positive unintended consequences. Parolees who accessed care—including behavioral health services—through the program had a recidivism rate of only 19 percent, far lower than the 56.7 percent national average. At the same time, Springfield Police saw a 13 percent overall reduction in calls to Enos Park during the first year of the program. This award reinforces not only our commitment to providing quality care to individual patients, but also our efforts to improve the health of the entire community.

2016

With contributions from MHQA, Memorial Medical Center received two top honors in a statewide quality excellence competition sponsored by the Illinois Health and Hospital Association (IHA). In the palliative care category, Memorial was recognized for its project that reduces palliative care readmissions by 80 percent. In the urban hospital category, Memorial was recognized for its project that improves care for chest pain patients and reduces length of stay in an emergency department for chest pain by 40 percent.

Memorial Medical Center received the top honor in the urban hospital category for a project that reduced the number of red blood cell transfusions by nearly a third, which sped treatment delivery, decreased adverse transfusion reactions and produced a $2.8 million cost savings.

Memorial Health System, the parent organization for Memorial Medical Center and six other affiliates, received the top quality award in the healthcare system category for work directed at reducing hospital-acquired pressure ulcers.